After assuring her that the tree was all right, Jenny added, “I love to hear the wind howl through these old trees, and were it not for you, I should wish it might blow so that I could lie awake and hear it.”

When it grew darker, and the stars began to come out.  Jenny was told “to close the shutters.”

“Now, Rose,” said she, “you are making half of this, for you know as well as I, that grandma’s house hasn’t got any shutters.”

“Oh, mercy, no more it hasn’t.  What shall I do?” said Rose, half crying with vexation.  “That coarse muslin stuff is worse than nothing, and everybody’ll be looking in to see me.”

“They’ll have to climb to the top of the trees, then,” said Jenny, “for the ground descends in every direction, and the road, too, is so far away.  Besides that, who is there that wants to see you?”

Rose didn’t know.  She was sure there was somebody, and when Mrs. Howland came up with one of the nicest little suppers on a small tea-tray, how was she shocked to find the window covered with her best blankets, which were safely packed away in the closet adjoining.

“Rose was afraid somebody would look in and see her,” said Jenny, as she read her grandmother’s astonishment in her face.

“Look in and see her!” repeated Mrs. Howland.  “I’ve undressed without curtains there forty years, and I’ll be bound nobody ever peeked at me.  But come,” she added, “set up, and see if you can’t eat a mouthful or so.  Here’s some broiled chicken, a slice of toast, some currant jelly that I made myself, and the swimminest cup of black tea you ever see.  It’ll eenamost bear up an egg.”

“Sweetened with brown sugar, ain’t it?” said Rose sipping a little of the tea.

In great distress the good old lady replied that she was out of white sugar, but some folks loved brown just as well.

“Ugh!  Take it away,” said Rose.  “It makes me sick and I don’t believe I can eat another mite,” but in spite of her belief the food rapidly disappeared, while she alternately made fun of the little silver spoons, her grandmother’s bridal gift, and found fault because the jelly was not put up in porcelain jars, instead of the old blue earthen tea-cup, tied over with a piece of paper!

Until a late hour that night, did Rose keep the whole household (her mother excepted) on the alert, doing the thousand useless things which her nervous fancy prompted.  First the front door, usually secured with a bit of whittled shingle, must be nailed, “or somebody would break in.”  Next, the windows, which in the rising wind began to rattle, must be made fast with divers knives, scissors, combs and keys; and lastly, the old clock must be stopped, for Rose was not accustomed to its striking, and it would keep her awake.

“Dear me!” said the tired old grandmother, when, at about midnight, she repaired to her own cosy little bedroom, “how fidgety she is.  I should of s’posed that livin’ in the city so, she’d got used to noises.”